from the yeah,-that's-convincing dept

We already wrote this morning about the ridiculous claims by The Sunday Times that Snowden's documents had been either given to the Russians and Chinese or that they had cracked the encryption to get them -- and that, because of this, the UK had to move intelligence "agents" out of Moscow for their safety. We pointed to numerous problems with the article, including many direct factual mistakes. One of the links we pointed to was Glenn Greenwald himself challenging many of the claims in the Sunday Times. This included highlighting the flat out lie that David Miranda was detained in Heathrow after visiting Snowden in Moscow (a claim the Sunday Times later simply deleted, with no correction or retraction).

Many people have been asking if the Sunday Times will say anything about the myriad problems with the article, and we now finally have a response. And it's... to send a DMCA takedown notice to Greenwald's publisher, First Look Media, claiming that, because he posted an image of the Sunday Times' front page layout, he is violating their copyright. Here's the section of Greenwald's article the Times (really, Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News UK, which is a subsidiary of News Corp) is complaining about:

The idea that this is somehow infringing is ridiculous. But here's what the lawyers at News Corp are claiming:

We write on behalf of Times Newspapers Limited (TNL) the publishers of The Times and The Sunday Times. TNL owns the copyright in the typographical arrangement of the front page of The Sunday Times published on 14 June 2015 (Material). The Material is an original work created by employees of TNL. A copy of the Material is enclosed.

A copy of the Material appears [on First Look's website] under the headline "THE SUNDAY TIMES' SNOWDEN STORY IS JOURNALISM AT ITS WORST -- AND FILLED WITH FALSEHOODS" (Infringing Content). The Infringing Content has been reproduced, communicated to the public and published onto the Website without TNL's permission and as such infringes the intellectual property rights of TNL....

Later, it notes:

... we have a good-faith belief that the use is not authorized by the copyright or other intellectual property rights owner, by its agent, or by law...

To put it mildly: this is ridiculous. Of course it's authorized by law, and that law is fair use. The UK may not have fair use, but the US does, and First Look is a US publication. The use above clearly and easily is fair use -- so much so that the lawyer for News Corp pretending otherwise is either the worst lawyer ever, or is being deliberately disingenuous with this threat letter.

Even more to the point: how could anyone at News Corp not realize how this would end up? There was no way that such a letter would have the intended purpose of taking down the content and the only thing it could do would be to draw extra attention to the fact that News Corp is trying to censor one of the people forcefully criticizing its ridiculous article, and highlighting what it got wrong. And, thus, the end result is further ridicule for News Corp, and further reasons to question the credibility of the Sunday Times.

Now, promotional giveaways are hardly a new or crazy idea, and they don't typically say anything bad about a business model—but I don't think that's really what's happening here. Certainly the Times hopes to convert some of those free readers into paid online subscribers, but there's also a clear pattern in the items they choose to make these exceptions for: huge social events that are attended and discussed by lots of people. In other words, precisely the sort of thing where blogs and social media offer the most competition to a newspaper. Why would anybody pay for Olympic reporting when the web is going to be absolutely flooded with constant updates on every little thing that happens, supplied for free by the fans and hangers-on? If the Times content is behind a paywall, it will be all but ignored.

And this really goes to show why, in the long run, paywalls are unsustainable. If the biggest, most popular topics are the hardest to control—and the ones that lose value the most when controlled successfully—while at the same, time social media and citizen reporting output is growing and expanding to new areas constantly, then the inevitable conclusion seems clear: paywalls are, at best, a temporary way of extracting a little bit of cash at the expense of long-term relevance. If your goal is to directly sell news as a product, but you discover that you have to eliminate your prices whenever product demand is highest, something is clearly wrong—you're trying to apply an old model where it doesn't actually fit, and getting kooky results. The solution is not to keep compromising the broken model, but to embrace the underlying realities (infinite content, no barrier to publishing, the huge value of share-ability) that broke it, and build new models around them.

from the apparently-paying-attention-isn't-a-core-competence-at-murdoch-and-co. dept

The International Institute of Communications is hosting a particularly one-sided "roundtable seminar" in Hong Kong this week about "content piracy." Just from that phrase, you should know the deck has been stacked against a reasoned analysis of the nature of internet communications. So, it shouldn't be a surprise that the RSVP email is actually from News Corp., or that the "agenda" of the session is entirely one-sided, and suggests a pretty impressive tone-deafness to the worldwide protests against SOPA/PIPA and ACTA. For example, the final question is particularly amusing:

Are there arguments against actions aimed to reduce the impact of these overseas rogue websites?

Apparently, all the concerns about collateral damage, free speech, due process, internet security and the like fell on deaf ears at News Corp. Instead, they seem to be wondering how anyone could possibly have an argument against the next SOPA. An intellectually honest discussion would at least admit that there are arguments being made both for and against these kinds of actions, and actually explore the reality. As we've noted plenty of times in the past, it's no secret that online infringement represents a challenge for established players, but that doesn't mean the immediate reaction should be to go on the attack in a way that creates many more problems, and is unlikely to solve the problem they think they're attacking. So, the argument "against" going after such websites is that it won't work, it's a waste of time and money, it will have tons of collateral damage... and you can better deal with the "problem" by providing more quality legitimate services without restrictions and at better prices. See? Not that hard.

from the on-the-penalty-of-perjury dept

So, Google just revealed its copyright takedown transparency report and it's turning into the gift that keeps on giving. We've already discussed how it shows Microsoft DMCAing links that remain in Microsoft's own search engine... and now reader David Sanger points us to another amusing one. On March 14th, apparently BayTSP (one of the more well-known "anti-piracy" firms), working for Twentieth Century Fox (a News Corp. company), demanded the removal of a link to SFGate.com.

SFGate? That's the website for the San Francisco Chronicle -- the main newspaper in San Francisco. So what was infringing? According to the DMCA notice (which says the filing came from Irdeto, the company that acquired BayTSP last year), insisted that what was actually at that link was:

"The copyrighted work at issue is the film "Chronicle", which is owned by "Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation"

Now, wouldn't that be something if the SF Chronicle was distributing the movie Chronicle illegally? But, of course, that's hogwash. The truth is that BayTSP and Fox screwed up. The SFGate article is now back online and you can see it's just an editorial about how SF Muni (the local public transit authority) should let students ride for free. That has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the movie Chronicle. What's amazing is the word "Chronicle" doesn't even show up in the article. It obviously shows up elsewhere on the page. After all, it is the website for the SF Chronicle.

Of course, in filing this DMCA takedown, BayTSP -- who is a "trusted user" of the takedown system -- swears upon the following statements:

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described in all notifications submitted through the Program as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

The information in all notifications submitted through the Program will be accurate, and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that with respect to those notifications, I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

That's clearly bunk, however, since nothing on that page is even remotely related to the movie Chronicle. How do you have a "good faith belief" that there's infringement when you clearly didn't even take the briefest second to look.

from the open-markets dept

When the MPAA came out with its annual report about the movie market worldwide, it showed that China was a huge growth market. However, now it appears that perhaps some of that growth was the result of Hollywood studios bribing Chinese officials. For years, China has limited how many Western movies can be released in the country. While Hollywood loves to decry all of the "piracy" in China, much of it is due to the fact that the movies can't be released there under the law. That's a situation where the problem is not piracy, nor the MPAA itself (even as it whines about Chinese piracy), but local laws. However, there has been a loosening of those restrictions lately -- and the SEC is exploring whether or not that came about due to bribes from the studios:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters of inquiry to at least five movie studios in the past two months, including News Corp's 20th Century Fox, Disney, and DreamWorks Animation, a person familiar with the matter said.

The letters ask for information about potential inappropriate payments and how the companies dealt with certain government officials in China, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the letters.

That said, there is an interesting tidbit in the Reuters article about all of this, that really serves to highlight how ridiculous the MPAA's fight against "piracy" is. It shows that despite the fact that piracy is rampant for Hollywood movies -- once the MPAA was able to get legit movies into the country, people flocked to the theaters. In other words, despite the cheaper pirated options -- or even free options -- people have no problem paying for the legit product when it's offered in a quality fashion:

Once again, this seems to demonstrate why the problem is not piracy. If consumers are offered what they want in a reasonable manner, they are more than willing to pay -- and the Hollywood studios seem to recognize this implicitly (which is why they may have bribed Chinese officials to release authorized versions in that market, even with "piracy" being so common).

from the tough-luck dept

We recently noted that the attempt by Hulu's owners to sell Hulu wasn't going well, mainly because those same owners had made it clear that they hoped to kill Hulu, by limiting how much it could compete with their lucrative legacy business of cable TV. No one was willing to offer more than $2 billion -- significantly less than what Hulu's owners wanted -- other than Google. But Google would only do it if the TV companies agreed to certain conditions (i.e., not killing off Hulu by limiting content, requiring a paywall, etc.)

So it comes as little surprise that Hulu has now announced that its owners are no longer trying to sell the company off. Instead, they'll focus on suffocating it from within. Well, that part wasn't mentioned, but watch what happens to Hulu execs over the next few months. I think it's likely that we're going to start seeing some departures of key people. Hulu was an amazingly well executed offering with a really capable team... but as we predicted, the fact that the only way it could really succeed was to cannibalize the business of its owners, almost certainly meant that Hulu would never be allowed to execute on the strategy it needed to become a massive player.

Of course, what the big TV companies still fail to recognize is that killing off Hulu doesn't stop the move to an a la cart, online driven world. It just means that when it comes, they will be even less relevant, and less able to capitalize on it.

from the whoops dept

The saga of how ridiculously disappointing News Corps.' paywalls have been continues. We've already seen that the number of subscribers looks dismal, advertisers are running away and even publicists are avoiding pitching The Times stories, because it's just not worth it, considering the diminished audience. Now, as a bunch of you sent in, it's gotten so bad that when The Times actually breaks a story, almost no one notices -- and the eventual "credit" for breaking the story goes elsewhere.

from the take-a-look-at-the-photos dept

Reader shaniac points us to a blog post on a custom toy blog, where the blogger explains how some of his photo galleries of custom toys he made were forced offline due to a DMCA takedown notice from 20th Century Fox, claiming that they infringed on intellectual property from the Wolverine movie. Except, if you look at the images, it seems pretty clear that they've got nothing, whatsoever, to do with Wolverine. In other words, 20th Century Fox appears to have broken the law, in claiming it held the copyright over the figures in those images, when it appears it did not. Unfortunately, the site hosting his content doesn't fully understand that under the DMCA it can re-enable his content if he files a counternotice and 20th Century Fox fails to file a lawsuit within a specified period of time. Instead, it's told the blogger that he needs to get the lawyer from 20th Century Fox to agree that the content doesn't infringe -- and the lawyers don't seem to be responding to any emails, meaning that the blogger is stuck in limbo for no good reason.

from the well,-good dept

Brad Greenspan, who at one point was CEO of Intermix, the spyware/adware firm that originally created MySpace, has been complaining for years that News Corp. engaged in fraud when it purchased Intermix in order to get MySpace at a discounted price. A court found nothing to support this, pointing out (yet again) that the acquisition was agreed to by both parties. However, that hasn't stopped Greenspan, whose own competitive startup Live Universe filed an antitrust lawsuit against MySpace for blocking Live Universe videos from MySpace profiles.

How is this possibly an antitrust issue? Well, that wasn't clear to anyone... least of all to the courts apparently. After first losing at the district court level, an appeals court has now found no validity in the antitrust claims either, sending Greenspan back to the drawing board for attempts to find ways to suck some more money out of News Corp.

from the you-must-pay-us-to-promote-us dept

Redlasso is an interesting company. Something of an online "clipping" service for television content, it has a nice web feature that allows users to do a search and find a relevant clip -- and to also embed that clip in your own website. It's been used to great effect by various sites that want to provide commentary on certain television content. The actions by Redlasso don't seem all that different than some old school TV clipping services, but (once again) the addition of "the internet" to the situation throws a legal wrench in things. NBC Universal and Fox are now suing Redlasso for violating copyrights.

This is especially odd since TV stations are in the business of attracting viewers, and giving people an easy way to promote your content to others (at absolutely no cost to you) would seem like a good plan for attracting more viewers. However, it would appear that the execs suing believe that companies should have to pay TV studios to promote their TV shows. Since it seems unlikely that the TV execs will recognize this any time soon, this particular case will hinge on the question of whether or not Redlasso can prove its claims that this use of clips is fair use. Update: As noted in the comments, the Redlasso has agreed to shut down the site, at least for now.